Being St Paulstide, January 1773
Biddy Leigh, her journal
Burned Toast Tea
Take as much dry crust of bread as the top of a penny loaf and set before the fire until the crust is burned cinder black. Pour over boiling water and soak until enough then strain into a sieve and mash it down. Drink while it is hot; if the first cup does not give relief drink another.
Biddy Leigh, a most worthy remedy for sickness of the stomach
There was a new smell in the air at Lyons, of sun-baked southern stuffs, of strong red vinegar, and spikes of rosemary. It was a good thing too, for some of the streets were stinking warrens, and the beggars near mithered me to death. The beggary was not for want of charity, for the place was a mass of popish churches and convents, ringing out their bells every quarter-hour. Yet thank my stars, our new lodgings were mighty grand, with glass windows, and our linen scented with orange blossom.
It was good that we were comfortably lodged for my lady had begun to complain more than ever as we approached Lyons. I heard Mr Pars scoff at what he called her posturing, but I judged her from what she ate, and even the sugariest rum baba that she had once devoured no longer tempted her. One morning, when only me and my lady were alone in our lodgings, she jangled her bell so hard that I cursed Jesmire for being away and ran to her chamber door. I found her slumped in her bed and saw at once she was truly sick. Once I was right close up, the strangest sight met my eyes, for her mouth was stained such a nasty black colour I feared she’d caught some terrible French plague.
‘My Lady!’ I cried, helping her sit upright. Then I noticed the plate at her bedside on which stood crumbs of shining black coal.
‘Let me clean you up,’ I said, trying to keep the astonishment out of my voice.
She was as meek as a lamb while I changed her mucky shift, but all the while my thoughts were in a whirlwind. I knew only one reason why women had a craving to eat coal. In my guts I had known all along this journey was not straight and proper, and now I had the proof. We were travelling for her health indeed! The whole scene was too outlandish for me to stay silent, so I spoke out boldly.
‘My Lady, Burned Toast Tea is the best of remedies if you are sick in the mornings.’
She didn’t answer, but she knew my meaning, for she slumped back on her bed and dropped her brow into her hand. When she raised her face, large tears welled in her eyes.
‘You know?’
‘I should have guessed earlier, My Lady.’ She looked up at me, quite heartbroke, grasping Bengo to her chest. The dog was wearing her newest extravagance, a silver collar that bore the words Bengo. Carinna’s heart in this four-footed thing lies. I had scoffed at that, but just then it seemed less daft than tragic.
‘I will help you any way I can, My Lady. I want to tell you that, before the others come back.’
‘Thank you, Biddy,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘I know so little of these matters, but have such a craving for black tastes. There can be no mistake can there? Look.’
She pulled back her bedcovers and I saw what I should have seen for the last month at least. There stood her belly, quite swelled beneath her fine lawn shift. She stared mournfully at it, her chin to her chest. ‘It grows so fast now. And I so often feel sick, as if some strangeness flows in my blood. Is that how it should be, Biddy?’
‘It can be, My Lady. The sickness, the heaviness.’ I sighed, trying to comprehend it all. ‘We must make haste to Italy.’
‘Yes, we must travel as fast as I can bear it.’ She flung her head back on the pillow and her eyes burned fiercely. ‘I need you, do you understand? And Mr Loveday. You do understand I can only trust the two of you?’
Tears trickled down her cheeks, so I passed her a pocket handkerchief. Then, summoning all my pluck, I asked what I longed to know, ‘Does Sir Geoffrey know, My Lady?’
She was silent for a moment, then shook her head in disgust. ‘Him? It’s nothing to do with that poxed old fool.’ She glared at me with sudden scorn. ‘What, you don’t know either? They let me find out on my wedding night. How kind was that? His nightgown fell open and the scabs on his flesh were like the scars of Hell. I couldn’t let that festering ghoul touch me. I thought I was the last to know, that he’d carried the pox for most of his life.’
I gaped at her. Yet it all rang true: Sir Geoffrey’s raddled face, his strange temper that some called crazed. No wonder she was fleeing from him.
‘But you told no one?’ I exclaimed, for she had been cruelly deceived. ‘My Lady, anyone would pity you.’
‘What?’ she cried. ‘And would they pity me still, as my own child grows larger every day?’ She cried a little into her twisted handkerchief. ‘We parted on ill terms. He wants never to see me again. He said if I spoke of his plight he would have me divorced in parliament. So if he knew of the child as well? I needed time. And money. I needed to escape.’ She was silent for a moment and I looked away.
‘Do you think the others will write to Sir Geoffrey?’ she asked, her voice shaking like a child begging not to be whipped.
‘I can’t say, My Lady.’ I was truly flummoxed. I wanted to help her, but scarcely knew how. ‘I’ll fetch you the tea, My Lady. Now why not take some rest?’
She reached up and patted my hand. ‘Thank you, Biddy. I’m so grateful you are here.’
The truth was, her kind words had left me choked up too. Fool that I was, I would have done anything for my lady, whatever she bid me in the whole world.
* * *
I got back to the kitchen, and there I re-fashioned my lady’s sad story as best as I could.
To start at the beginning, she must have lain with some fellow in the summer, and when her monthly curses stopped, got a devilish fright. Then the rogue no doubt refused to stand up and give his name to the babe. It were mighty handy then, that she had the chance to marry Sir Geoffrey in October. I set a slice of bread on a toasting fork before the fire and charred it as black as the Earl of Hell’s boots.
Even after finding out Sir Geoffrey was poxed, I was now sure that she had never tried to poison him. My mind ran again over the ailments The Cook’s Jewel listed to be cured by Sassafras Oil and this time something chimed in the corner of my mind. I left the toast steeping in water and slipped back to my chamber. Leafing through The Cook’s Jewel I found it – ‘Menstrual Obstruction’. I was minded of an apothecary calling a woman’s curses a ‘menstres’ or some such word. What was it obstructed a woman’s monthly curses but a baby? God’s eggs, she had bought the oil to try to get rid of the baby! So she was a desperate creature indeed. By the time I first saw her at Mawton she must have been suffering all the troublesome signs of breeding. Lord, she had played her part better than an actress on the stage. In terror of being found out she had planned this journey. And no doubt fearing foreign food would make her even sicker, she had dragged me along as well.
Now all the time I’d been bursting to tell someone of my discovery, and so after I’d seen my lady settled I called out to Mr Loveday when I heard him return. When he came to the kitchen I jumped up and grasped his hand tight.
‘May I share a secret, as friends do?’ I asked. When he nodded keenly, I lowered my voice and said, ‘You will never believe it, my lady is to have a child. That’s what is behind all this journey.’
‘A child? How you know?’
I told him all I’d learned, and rambled on and on. ‘But it is not Sir Geoffrey’s child,’ I ended, ‘so who is the true father? Mr Loveday, was there ever a man she had a particular liking for, back in the summertime?’
He frowned and stared at the ceiling, then shook his head.
‘Some gentlemen took her to Vauxhall Garden and all that. I think maybe one fellow, she always ask if card left at door. Mr Napier I think. He marry some other woman to get lot of money, I hear say.’
So perhaps this Napier was the rakeshame who had ruined her? I remembered the blotted letter she had been trying to write, that day I first met her in the blue chamber. I didn’t speak of it, but knew now that of course she had not been writing of Sir Geoffrey. So to whom had she been writing those hot-blooded scribblings? That ‘fire’s heat’ – why, I might have been a maid, but I knew enough of my own inner flames and desirings to know a lusty young man must have been at the heart of it. No doubt she had met this Napier at some London junket and he had convinced her that he would honour her. God’s garters, it truly was the oldest of ancient tales.
After that, to marry Sir Geoffrey weren’t such a bad plan at all, to turn a girl’s shame into a title, and then scarper off here to foreign parts, so none would be the wiser. It was clear to me she’d kept even Mr Kitt and her uncle in the dark. And to cap it all, she was spending Sir Geoffrey’s astonishing heap of money too.
‘Well, I pity her for marrying poxed Sir Geoffrey, but my lady breeding – oh, I can’t believe I never noticed it before,’ I said, clasping my hand to my mouth.
‘Nor I,’ said a biting voice from the doorway. Mr Loveday and I jumped up to our feet like two jack-in-the-boxes. Jesmire was there, not five paces away, her face mighty priggish and triumphant. I wondered how long she’d been listening, for me and Mr Loveday had been gossiping so hard she could have heard every word.
‘I might have known you would dig up whatever is most foul,’ she snapped at me.
‘It’s only the truth,’ I protested, folding my arms and facing her. ‘At least I had the wit to discover what troubles my poor lady, which is more than you ever did!’
‘Poor lady indeed,’ she spat. ‘Well, we shall see what Mr Pars makes of these deceits.’ There was nowt I could do to stop the old sneak, who turned on her heels, leaving me mighty uneasy.
* * *
I was summoned to appear before Mr Pars that night. He sat behind the oak table in his chamber, playing the solemn judge. If he’d scolded me, it would have cleared the air, but instead old Pars was oddly calm and gentle.
‘Sit a while and let me talk to you, Biddy,’ he said, motioning me towards a chair. He was watching me with a soft expression; more like I was a mischievous child than anything.
‘Biddy, Miss Jesmire has told me what you have discovered. It saddens me that while in my care you’ve been exposed to such debauchery. It must have been a great surprise to you. What did your mistress say?’
I couldn’t see any harm in telling him, for my lady’s condition would soon be apparent to all.
‘She is most terribly heartbroke, sir. Quite overcome with it all. And fearful of you writing to Sir Geoffrey, sir.’
He took a thoughtful suck on his pipe and breathed out two mazy puffs of sweet grey smoke. ‘Maybe it would be for the best if Sir Geoffrey never hears of this. He’s a very sick man. Bad news could be the final blow to my dear master.’ He drummed his fingers on the edge of the table top. ‘And did she say any more to you, Biddy? Go on, girl. Spit the truth out. What else did she say?’
I stared at the floor and wished myself a thousand miles away.
‘She said Sir Geoffrey, pardon my speaking so ill of my master, sir, was sick with the pox when she married him.’ I glanced up quickly. He was studying me carefully, but didn’t look at all astonished. ‘So that prevented them, from like – she cannot pass the baby off as his.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded sagely. ‘Did she say any more? Speak of anyone else?’
‘No, sir. She only asked me to help her, which I will gladly do, without asking, sir.’
‘You think she likes you, eh?’ He shook his head, as if quite pained, then waited for my eye to meet his. ‘I know she’s given you all these absurd notions of your own importance. Aye, it’s true, isn’t it? She deceives you with her flattery and kind words. But use your wits, girl. Ask yourself, why should she care about you?’
In the silence I racked my brainbox for an answer.
‘I don’t know, sir.’
He was looking at me very shrewdly, his eyes quite narrow and sharp. ‘I always thought you were a good honest girl. Mrs Garland reckons you are like a daughter to her.’
What with all the ups and downs of the day I couldn’t bear being reminded of good Mrs Garland. I felt tears rise behind my eyes just at the mention of my dear friend. What was it she had said? To trust Mr Pars, for he was a gentleman and a God-fearing Christian besides. So my voice were choked when I answered, ‘I try to be good, sir. Honest, I do try.’
‘Then tell me.’ He stroked the inky papers that lay in piles across his desk. ‘What does your mistress mean, by favouring you?’
I wanted to answer him truly; I wanted to prove I could be good.
‘That she likes me, sir?’
‘Nonsense!’ His knotted fist hit the table with a thump that made me jump. ‘Of course she doesn’t like you, you blockhead. What is going on? Tell me!’
I shook my head, brain-choked with it all.
‘I wish I knew, sir.’
Suddenly I felt like a wing-battered fly in a terrible web of misunderstandings. I realised then, I had not the first notion of what Mr Pars, or Lady Carinna, truly wanted from me at all.